If you grew up anytime near the ‘90s, you were raised in the golden age of the great American family sitcom: Family Matters, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and of course, Full House. And if there’s one thing we all know about those wholesome classics, it’s that they each had a lovable loner or edgy outsider — few more iconic than Full House’s bad-girl best friend with the resting b*tch face, Gia.
It’s been decades since Stephanie’s frenemy first stirred up drama in the Tanner family, but the actor who played her, Marla Sokoloff, has brought us many more memorable characters over the years: Jody in Party of Five, Wilma in Dude, Where’s My Car, Lisa in Sugar & Spice, Lucy on The Practice. She even played Joey’s little sister in an episode of Friends. And her latest role? Well, it may very well be ushering in the return of ~another~ nostalgic era of television: the rise of rom-coms.
Come Nov. 20, Sokoloff will be joining Britt Robertson and Chad Michael Murray in The Merry Gentleman on Netflix. But Sokoloff isn’t just starring in the film as Robinson’s sister, Marie; she also wrote the movie. The gist? Robinson’s Ashley, a former big-city dancer, sets out to save her parents’ small-town performing arts venue. Leaning into her strengths, she decides to stage an all-male, Christmas-themed revue.
Scary Mommy caught up with Sokoloff, who lives in LA with her husband and their three daughters, Elliotte, Olive, and Harper, to chat through the movie (including Murray’s abs), all things Christmas, and the piece of advice she constantly gives her girls.
Scary Mommy: Thank you, friend, for doing the lord’s work by writing this movie. How did this come about?
Marla Sokoloff: That’s so funny, the Lord’s work. I’m dying. Well, so the producer of the movie, Jeff Shank, is someone that I’ve worked with before, and I just love collaborating with him. He called me one day and said, ‘I have this idea for a movie, and I’m wondering if you’d be interested in writing it,’ because I’ve written other things for him before. So, I can’t take credit for the actual idea, but it was such a fun concept. I think he gave me one sentence to go off of, and I just kind of ran with it. It’s interesting coming from the perspective of a female because, just like you’re saying, we all know what we want to see.
SM: The news got shared immediately in our work chat, and the excitement was palpable.
MS: Honestly, with Chad Michael Murray, I just think it’s so exciting for people from my generation and even my 12-year-old’s generation. I didn’t think she was going to know who he was because One Tree Hill isn’t trendy anymore and Gilmore Girls is older, but she was losing her mind over Chad Michael Murray.
SM: In a very memorable moment from the trailer, you’re taking some measurements for his character, Luke…
MS: Oh yeah, all up in his abs.
SM: What was it like working with Murray and the rest of the cast? They really took their dancing seriously, I hear.
MS: They did, which was great. The second it got greenlit, I said to the director of this film, Peter Sullivan, ‘I know who you need to hire as the choreographer — my friend Christine Lakin.’ You might know her from Step By Step; she’s been around since the ’90s. She’s fabulous. And the guys just all did such an amazing job really committing to these dances. They rehearsed for hours on end. I don’t think any of them ate any carbohydrates for months.
SM: We appreciate your service, sirs. You also star in it. What’s your character, Marie, like?
MS: So, Marie is Britt Robertson’s sister, and she’s a girl who never really left her hometown. She’s got a husband who, by way of knowing Marie, became one of the dancers in the all-male revue. She’s the voice of reason. She really just wants the best for her sister, and that definitely means finding love.
SM: Speaking of family, I understand you are a Christmas girly like myself. What are some of your family’s favorite movies to watch during the holidays?
MS: I don’t think a Christmas has gone by where we haven’t watched Elf and Home Alone. I know some people say, ‘Oh, Home Alone isn’t necessarily a Christmas movie; it just takes place at Christmas.’ But to me, it brings Christmas vibes, and it’s always something that we watch along with the classic Elf and Christmas Story. My kids haven’t really gotten into that one yet, but that’s just one that I have to watch every December.
SM: It’s funny what hits with kids and what doesn’t from our childhood.
MS: I showed my middle daughter, who’s 9, Camp Nowhere. Do you remember that movie?
SM: Oh yes… a millennial classic.
MS: She just did not get it. I was so excited to show it to her, and she was like, ‘Yeah, I liked it,’ and I was just so irritated. I’m like, ‘How are you not loving this movie? It’s Andrew Keegan. Come on.’
SM: Kids!
MS: I know. So disappointing.
SM: If there’s one thing you want your daughters to take away from the things you’re teaching them, what would it be?
MS: The first thing I think of is ‘go where the love is.’ Especially having a teenager, the friendship thing gets so tricky — I’m 43 and sometimes still have things with friends — so I’m really trying to instill with them go where the love is. If you’re in a friendship that isn’t making you feel great or a relationship or a job or anything, you just lead with the love.
That really is something I think I say eight million times a day to my kids … I don’t try to lecture them like, ‘Why are you hanging out with her? She sounds awful.’ Instead of doing that, I just want them to always respect themselves and stand up for themselves.
SM: Now that your two oldest are approaching Gia’s age, I was curious what advice you give them about the Gias in their lives. But ‘go where the love is.’ I like that.
MS: Like I said, I’m in my 40s, and I still have to remind myself that. If you go to lunch with somebody and you get in the car and you’re like, ‘I don’t really feel great. For some reason, that person didn’t lift me up in any way,’ I just think life’s too short, and we all don’t have enough time to continue to invest in those kinds of friendships.
SM: I recently entered what my friends and I call our ‘F*ck It 40s.’ So much clarity comes with age and realizing you just want to be around the people who bring you joy.
MS: Right, all the things — going out and taking the time away from your family to go to dinner or an event or whatever — it has to be something I want to do and feel great doing; otherwise, I just want to be at home with my family.
But also to your point about the F*ck It 40s, which I love by the way, I feel like I used to think that I would never leave my house in sweats or looking kind of whatever … Now I’m just like, ‘I don’t care.’ I will go to the market looking like I need to be institutionalized, and I don’t care.
SM: Same! Well, there’s a pretty big age difference between your oldest and youngest. What have you found the most challenging about that, and what have you really enjoyed about that gap?
MS: The challenging part is I kind of realized that my littlest one, at a certain point, will be an only child because my oldest will be out of the house. Then, my middle child will be in high school at a certain point, and that age gap is sometimes tricky. I would say, for the most part, the age gap is absolutely amazing because she’s obsessed with her older sisters and worships them, but also, the older sisters are able to help.
My first daughter was like 3 when I had my second, and … I was so overwhelmed all the time, like, ‘How can I do all of this?’ I was just always so stressed. Now that I’m older and my kids are older, I can admit that I definitely did not enjoy it in the way I should have. Every milestone was like, ‘Oh, thank God, you’re potty-trained. Oh good, you’re going to school.’ It felt like just like crawling uphill. And now, with my youngest, I’m like, ‘No, I don’t want her to go to school,’ or ‘I want her to stay little.’
SM: Outside of mom life, you’ve been in so many iconic shows and movies. Is there anyone you’d love to work with that you haven’t yet? Or a story you’d love to tell?
MS: That’s a great question. I’m dying to collaborate with Jen Garner again. We played twin sisters in Dude, Where’s My Car, and I’m always thinking about how fun it would be for us to work on something together. I think the world loves her, and we all just want more of her.
And I want to tell more rom-com stories. I feel like Nobody Wants This is dipping our toe back into the movies and TV shows that we all want to see, and I think that’s why it did so well. We all just want some lighter fare and comedy and actors with chemistry.
SM: Sugar & Spice is one of your classic early aughts movies. Could you ever see that getting a sequel, and where do you think Lisa would be today?
MS: Oh my gosh, that would be a really fun sequel. I’ve actually never even considered that one. But God, where is Lisa today? She’s probably divorced with four kids and just a mess of a person. I don’t know if she has many friends. Her kids probably hate her, too.
We had so much fun shooting that movie. Mena Suvari and I were friends for years before that, and so it was so great to work with her. And Marley Shelton, our kids go to school together now, so I see her pretty frequently at school. I think if you would’ve told me when we filmed that movie that we would have kids in school together one day, I don’t know if that would even have been any form of a reality to me.
SM: Haha, well, put a little bug in her ear the next time you see her…
MS: Yeah, I will! I think The Baby-Sitters Club, too. I know they’ve done a lot of reboots of that, but not with the OG cast members. I think that would also be very fun because we’re still really close.
SM: Definitely! People are still so nostalgic for it.
MS: Which I think is another reason why Nobody Wants This is doing so well, because Adam Brody’s back and we all love Kristen Bell. Hopefully the same will be true with The Merry Gentlemen. It’s, like, you get Chad Michael Murray without his shirt on. Come on. What more could you want?
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
